E302 

.6 
.R2R9 













V- 




























A 



■0 



V <A^ .^/' 






.nV 



V^. 






^V 



^^. 


















4 





-• . . 5 ^ ^A- 



> o ^^4 O, 



■1 


°o 




,«^' 


**. 


^.^ 




X'"" 




-^b 


v^ 


; 








,-.0 


^^ 


"'■*: 


/-> 




w ' 


















^-^, 






' .0 



>jr?7^ 






-'%. ^1-^ 



•■*-, 



■/■ 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 



fHlirioiiir amir mt aiiowt* 



The Fiend is long, and lean, and lank, 

And moves upon a spindle-shank. Old Song 



BY JULIUS. V ^_, \ 



\^' 



THIRD EDITION, 




f' 



WASHINGTON .* 

PRINTED RV PETER FORCE, CORNER OF ELEVENTH STREET ANE 
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. 

1829. 



[The demand for this Sketch having 
continued after all the copies of the second 
edition were sold, has induced the publish- 
er to issue a third edition.] 

October, 1829. 



ERRATA. 



Wt Page 11, line 16, "argumentative/" 
'^ Page 16, line 16, " an,^* 

Page 17, line 23, " ^cMrrility." 



Mv. Mnntfolpfi^ ^ttoatr anXf at ?^onie* 



The Fiend is long, and lean, and lank. 

And aioves upon a spindle shank. Oid Song. 



On his first arrival in London, all eyes were 
struck with his figure in the streets. The human 
form from all parts of the globe was to be seen 
there, but nothing like his. It seemed to belong 
to a class by itself; long, lean, and loose jointed — 
a withered face, a shrunken body, and the whole 
expression peculiar and startling. Many who pass- 
ed him turned round to take another look. How 
mysterious exclaimed one, how outlandish anoth- 
er — a term to which the English are addicted. 
His complexion was death-like. Sometimes he 
moved about on foot, and sometimes rode a pony. 
When saluting people, his voice would mount up 
to a high, shrill, key, as if he were hallooing. 
The particulars of his dress were obscured by a 
long cloak, which, in one respect, claimed resem- 
blance to the doublet of Gaffer Gray — it was not 
very new. As it came tight about him, or waved 



4 



in the wind, many a side-long glance did it get 
from the passing brokers of Monmouth street.* 
It was apparent that the wearer had determined, 
with characteristic independence, on reaching the 
British Metropolis, to pay no regard to Polonius's 
advice to Laertes. 

I must be pardoned these allusions to his per- 
son and habiliments. It is easy to anticipate the 
criticism they might draw down ; but in that code, 
with the general rule comes also the exception. 
My account must have some touches of external 
individuality. It is required by the unity and jus- 
tice of my plan. " Let's carve him as a dish fit 
for the gods, not hew him as a carcase for the 
hounds," was, I know, said by the poet of nature. 
He spoke of one who was accomplished, magnan- 
imous, noble-minded ; of one, who, if he had the 
I towering crime of ambition, had graces that could 
captivate, virtues that could attach. But what is 
to be done with the compound of deformity I am 
to deal with ? — this " sketch and outline of a 
man," this haggard anatomy. The great diffi- 
culty will consist in self-restraint, and this I intend 
to practise. 

• An itinerary body known in the London cries by their beards, and the 
bags they carry. 



A fatality of circumstances threw me into con- 
tact with him. How to behave was the question. 
After weighing all things, I resolved to make the 
best of him. It was yet a problem what effect 
the excitements of a new hemisphere might have 
upon him. I bethought me that I would consider 
him in the light of a freakish friend, newly ar- 
rived ; a sort of wandering Whimsiculo. I hid 
from myself most of the phases of his character, 
whilst, taking a survey of him all over, I tasked 
imagination to get at others that might the better 
bear, under exceptions reserved, to be half present- 
ed to view. It was a case to have perplexed a 
casuist. The strife was difficult, the dilemma em- 
barrassing, the whole enterprise surrounded wiih 
stumbling blocks. His grotesque aspect, the ob- 
ject of popular stare and scientific speculation ; his 
everlasting attempts at effect, whether in conduct 
or conversation ; his harrangues, given out in ac- 
cents so novel, and with no poor rivalry of the 
fame and fashion of Anacharsis Cloots, or Sir 
Walter Scott's Wamba ; his diverting lapses from 
the observances of the world ; his profound obei- 
sance to rank, which, though it overflowed in tem- 
porary good nature at that epoch of his life and 
travels, kept showing itself in ways exquisitively 



6 



ludicrous — all this, and more, how can I ever for- 
get it ! Good nature itself was a garb that fitted 
him so awkwardly, that his very desire to wear 
it pro hac vice could not fail to predispose the 
looker on to emotions of risibility. It was like 
attempting to metamorphose Old Rapid in the 
play, into a man of fashion. 

In one sense he acquired celebrity. And here, 
to award him proper justice, I must be more cir- 
cumstantial than on a former occasion. In a cer- 
tain part of the west end o{ the town, there ex- 
isted a well known club.* The kindness of its 
members had extended to strangers the privilege 
of resorting to it. Some strangers were disposed 
to make a large use of the privilege, but I will 
not be particular. It is enough for my narrative 
to say, that Mr. Randolph obtained permission to 
frequent this club. A boon it was of no slight 
value to him, for here an audience, for the most 
part, was ready assembled. Here was his daily 
rendezvous, here the chosen theatre of his displays. 
His auditors were not such as might be collected 
at every-day exhibitions. They were of different 
mould, and especially did they minister to his 
complacency by tokens of outward civility. Our 

*'« The Travellers." 



1 



orator of the human race, allured by supposed 
admiration of his parts, would go on with his 
discourses. They are graven upon the everduring 
tablets of the club. How shall I report them ? 
Spirit of Swift aid me ! His quotations from 
Latin whilst the Oxonians were by ; quantum 
mutatus ab illo Hectare, which was but the herald 
of what was to follow, for out came, in apposite 
and beautiful connexion, quantum mutata ab ilia 
Virginia! The latter was uttered slowly and 
sagely ; also with a pious and filial sigh, for he 
grew pensive when picturing the changes to which 
fate had doomed the " Old Dominion," being 
prone to dwell upon the antiquity of the colony in 
the heart of the mother country. His reminiscen- 
ces still more recherche from the French, nous 
verrons, nous verrons, Je n^oublierai jamais, Je 
ri'oublierai jamais, with sayings and mottoes from 
other tongues and books, from the Whole Duty of 
Man, from Tom Jones, Doctor Faustus, Shake- 
speare, Rochester, the Bible, Racine, Pope, San- 
cho, Vicar of Wakefield, Virgil, Caleb Quotem, 
Patrick Henry, Juvenal, Jack Robinson, every 
body ; all this, with various additional infusions 
of classical, topographical, and genealogical eru- 
dition, the genealogy comprehending man and 



8 



beast, king, peer, and race horse — presented a 
scene at which Momus himself would have stood 
at gaze. It received its last finish from the enfold- 
ed drapery of the old green tunick, through which 
peeped the sunken head of the orator, as he sat in 
bent-up posture, his finger pointing the while. — 
Never had Pall Mall witnessed any thing like it. 
Looks were exchanged that bespoke the universal 
surprise. Some left the occupations they were 
lounging over, to get nearer to him. Some, un- 
moved from their seats of damask, would yet turn 
up their significant glances from the page before 
them. A young Etonian was heard to whisper, 
let's catch him with ibant ponere juxta. English 
reserve could not stand it. Such auditors always 
suppress intemperate jollity; but a guarded, con- 
tagious, merriment went round. The most un- 
bending gave way ; the more arch aimed, by their 
blandishments, at decoying him into repetitions. 
It was a scene sui generis, novel even for London. 
The sillikiccabee feast for variety, and the cauldron 
of the wierd sisters for congruity, were its only 
types. Repeated it was, with variations — " Hoby's 
boots for ever so help him Heaven, and Manton's 
guns — his rascally overseer who had cheated him — 
the round heads, how he hated them — the cavaliers, 



9 



how he loved them — Virginia, old Virginia, true 
to Charles — the vermin in his own country that 
fattened on the public crib, he gave it to them, 
that he did and would — Bladensburg, Yazoo, the 
Yankees, the Negroes, Mason and Dickson's line, 
the man in the moon" — every thing danced in the 
astounding gallimaufry. Such a clatter of dis- 
cordant ideas, such a hurly burly of the brain, 
had been heard in the edifice that stood in Moor- 
lields, but never elsewhere in England. It must 
not be forgotten, that he filled up his intervals 
with the most reverential indications of his devo- 
tion to the rank and title that surrounded him. 
Sometimes they became almost Koo too ^' 

All things however, as all men, are destined to 
come to an end. In London no divertisement can 
have more than its appointed run. As the novelty 
of this faded, its attractiveness began to fade too. 
The auditors were plainly seen to flag. They 
grevi^ sky, a feeling not diminished in them, from 
its absence in him. He has said on the floor of 
an august assembly in his own country, as part 
of his argument I believe on an internal improve- 
ment question, that he had the entree of some of 

* The nine prostrations. See the hook of Impcihil Coemonics of ilie 
Chinese, and Lord Amherst's embassy. 

B 



10 



their domicils afterwards. If he had, it was in 
the capacity in which Wamba found himself seated 
on the Dais of Cedric, the better to carry off the 
entertainment for the lady Rowena and Sir Knight 
Templar. 

What a charlatan am I describing. I am ready 
to throw away the pen. But no — he has earned 
retribution at my hands. I will go on. I seem to 
persuade myself that the reader also says, do not 
stop. You have in him materials, the most in- 
viting and authentic, for laughter and for scorn. 
He is the double mark of jocularity and detesta- 
tion. Proceed : you owe it to the public amuse- 
ment, what is of higher aim — to the cause of mo- 
ral and social order, which he has so long invaded, 
to aid in making him better known ; to toss him 
in sport and analyze him in rigor. Spare him not. 
It is fit, it is even a duty, that some citizen should 
offer himself as lictor, when the state is beset by 
so enormous a transgressor. The fasces of your 
office will be holy ; bind him fast and do not let 
go the rods. The applause of the nation will 
wait upon your inflictions; for who, from the 
north to the south, from the forests to the ocean, 
but has been outraged by him ? who has escaped 
his viperous inroads, what individual, what fam- 



11 



ilj — who among the quick or the dead ? I will 
then to my task. — I shall be a benefactor to in- 
terests of the body social as well as body politic, 
upon which he brutally tramples. It is a task 
which I should perform with more of self-appro- 
bation, were not my materials as loathsome as 
they are abundant. One recommendation I will 
claim for them. They shall have no connexion 
with the politics of the day, it being my design to 
delineate him upon principles of abstract right and 
wrong. To those who may possibly think, that 
in what has preceded, the coloring has been free, 
I reply, that, even if it be, I do nothing more than 
copy in this respect the example of the best mas- 
ters — provided that the likeness be preserved. 
But 1 promise, in what is to follow, to be aug- 
mentative and exact, challenging assent to what I 
say, only according to its intrinsic application and 
force. I will strive to discriminate and sum up 
his character after the manner of Sallust or of 
Hume ; and although, in execution, I must needs 
fall immeasurably behind such illustrious models, 
I mean at least to aim at being the historian rather 
than the painter. With an eye steadfast to the 
original before me, I proceed to the duty I have 
assigned to my self. 



12 



When he got to London he was seized with an 
ambition, which took directions as bold, and as slj, 
as the passion in him was alternately keen and 
fidgetty, to throw himself into distinguished cir- 
cles. His inbred and long indulged selfishness, in 
conjunction with the irascible cast of his feelings 
and foulness of his tongue, had rooted into his 
entire corporeal and intellectual existence, invinci- 
ble barriers to the success of this ambition. To 
the sensibilities, to the restraints, bodily and of 
mind — to the multiplied obligations and habitudes, 
to all the anxious and assiduous cultivation, that 
go to make up the gentleman, he was a stranger. 
His irregular and undisciplined temper, was the 
parent of rudeness in him, and his vanity hurried 
him into offences against good sense and decorum. 
The bland spirit and reciprocal forbearance of 
polished intercourse, seemed to be altogether in- 
comprehensible to his perceptions. It is certain 
that they were remote from his practice. True 
dignity frowned him from her presence. Her 
sanctuary was profaned at his fantastic approach. 
True urbanity could never impart its charm to 
the actions of one whose physical indiosyncrasy 
prevented his being at peace with himself, and 
the perverseness of whose moral nature placed 



13 



him at war vvitli others. Something there was in 
liis countenance, which bespoke the bitter con- 
sciousness he had of his doom upon earth ; of the 
secret torments under which he writhed, of the 
matchless delights from which he was excluded. 
The fountahi of man's highest transports and ho- 
liest affections, was, alas, unknown to him. O 
heavy malediction, O ! sufficient to have awakened 
commisseration for his lot, were it not averted by 
the sense of his own transgressions. To all ten- 
derness towards the feelings of others, he was con- 
stitutionally dead. The transient courtesy that he 
was enforced to counterfeit, could not mask from 
careful observation, the brooding devil that lurked 
within. His bald flattery, laid at the feet of birth 
and station, the proof of which propensity in him 
was, on a subsequent occasion, echoed from the 
mobs of Liverpool to our shores, confirmed still 
more the most unfavorable suspicions of him. 
Hie niger est ; hune tu Romane caveto. Possess- 
ing no attribute of benignity to conciliate, or of 
grace to win ; a monopolist or a mute when con- 
versation went its rounds ; by turns a misanthrope 
and a merry-Andrew ; afflicted by envy of his 
race, destitute of all endearing sympathies, desti- 
tute of the desire to please and unwillingness to 



14 



oftpiid, that lie at the foundation of good breeding 
every where, — \a hat place was there for him in a 
society whose maxims had no recipient in any 
quality of his own nature, or any part of his own 
conduct ? for one whose captious and snarling 
humor had ever supplied his titles to social eclat : 
whose refinements were in his malice, not in his 
manners. I recall the word. I revoke my error. 
Incapable of refinement in any thing, his malice 
was headlong, promiscuous and savage-like. 

He was thus, by the primary laws of his exis- 
tence, and the distinctive peculiarities of his ca- 
reer, unfitted for the circles that he sought. Those 
were circles that overlooked not the slightest de- 
viations in their votaries, much less trespasses so 
egregious and constant as his. Upon the order 
and beauty of private life, upon its harmonious 
scenes and enjoyments, he broke in as a spoiler, 
and was shunned as an intruder. Its tranquil at- 
mosphere, its subdued and guarded tones and sen- 
timents, its easy, respectful, emulous politeness, 
its air of mutual reliance and esteem — all took as 
the sign of a coming blight the entrance of one 
whose fiist object and inclination were, to criti- 
cise and to wound ; who looked only in sneers, 
and spoke only in sarcasms. It was not even 



15 

" the delicac}' of sneer," which Mr. Snake eulo- 
gises in the School for Scandal— no, it was over- 
charged and spiteful, for the external symbols of 
the accomplished cjnic, were more than he could 
reach. Nor were his sarcasms like the gilded 
weapons of civilized hostility, sparkling as they 
pierce : — they were the mere poisoned darts of 
the wily barbarian. The " stately homes" of 
England, know when to throw open their gorgeous 
portals ; but their hospitality, as kind as it is mag- 
nificent, above all their confidence — slowly given 
at all times — befitted not such a guest. His fai- 
lure to gain the privileged recesses of a system 
upon the confines of which he had mounted for 
u moment by storm, produced an inward exasper- 
ation, the expression of which it is the wary office 
of his pride to repress. It suited his cunning bet- 
ter to speak of his privilege of entree to these dom- 
icils, thus allowing his vanity to blazen his ig- 
norance, for he knows not the meaning of the 
term as he has here used it. He used it in refer- 
ence to an ancient mansion in Picadilly,* the no- 
ble proprietor of which is not more remarkable for 
the splendour of his rank and fortune, than for the 
train of mild and engaging virtues that adorn his 

" Devonshire House. 



16 



private, as his constitutional principles have illus- 
trated his public life ; and who could no more 
amalgamate with this cadaverous personage of 
motley talk and gestures, this Mr. Squeakery, this 
foe to all that is amiable and benign in life, than 
he could with a gibbering ghost of the charnel 
house, or the Red Rover of the ocean. The lat- 
ter was not a more practised freebooter upon pro- 
perty and life, than the Rover I am portraying is 
upon reputation. 

Driven back from tlie first project of his trans- 
Atlantic ambition, that of obtruding himself upon 
high society, what remained to be said of him ? 
How was he to be defended in a community where 
he was regarded without fear, and judged by 
na enlightened scrutiny ? To what part of his 
whole being was his abashed compatriot and apol- 
ogist to turn ? Coming to the virtues of the heart, 
that elevate and purify the human character, it 
was conceded, as fundamental to all discussion 
about him, that he was an outcast of them. Vi- 
tality itself, so often appearing to sink in his im- 
perfect frame, seemed chiefly to be sustained by 
his vindictiveness and rancour. These kindled in 
him a feeling, the reanimating impulse of which 
enabled him to struggle against dissolution, a state 



17 



fraught with increased horror to his contempla- 
tion — as withdrawing him from his work of de- 
traction and revenge. His bad passions, which 
were his motives for living, became in this manner 
the means of strengthening his hold upon life, 
by their stimulating efficacy upon the morbid mass 
within him. His passports to fame were hence 
clearly to be made out, if at all, on other grounds 
than those of the Virtues. What were they ? 
On looking at his intellect, it was obvious that it 
had been scathed by the same stroke that blasted 
his heart and his body. There was nothing direct 
in his mind, nothing natural, nothing simple ; 
nothing that admitted the presence or the possibil- 
ity of real greatness- All was suspicious, insidi- 
ous, accusatory; all afifecteii plainness and sys- 
tematic juggling ; pretended uniformity and in- 
cessant contradiction. No results therefore came 
from his mind, but such as were missba[)en or 
malignant. It had no power of connected thought 
or action, and, impervious to all benevolent or 
kindly or philanthropic excitements, could be rous- 
ed only by such as exploded in testiness and sur- 
rility. It was worked upon both by presumption 
and impatience, the former debarring it from the 
conception, the latter from the achievement of ex- 



18 



celleiice, in any thing. He once threw from his 
hands a disquisition of Mr. Madison's upon public 
law, declaring it too vapid to be read — his self- 
inflation hiding from him his own inability to com 
prehend either, its profound knowledge or its ele- 
vated patriotism. His ostentatious claim to a cer- 
tain uncompromising honesty and stiffness of prin- 
ciple, which, like a braggart, he was fond of 
throwing out, was but the more incongruous from 
the incapacity of his mind to form any system of 
principles whatever. Those who might even deny 
this, could not help admitting, that all the prin- 
ciples which he had, laid at the mercy of his ani- 
mosities, and were put on and put off accordingly. 
The friend and the foe of the three illustrious Pre- 
sidents from Virginia ; the public eulogist one day 
of the productions of a venerable native artist, 
the next their public reviler ; at one season of his 
life, the plam democrat, at another, affecting the 
hauteur of aristocracy, without its dignity ; in 
youth bedecked in homespun ; in age playing the 
ci-devant young man, with a motley wardrobe of 
bye-gone patterns from abroad, ludicrously limp- 
ing after, without being able to follow, the fashions 
of a Regent street dandy — such is this aboriginal 
Pantaloon, every thing by turns and nothing long= 



19 



devoted only to himself; uniform in nothinjr but 
the tricks of a Zany, and his envious malignity 
against the human race, to which he but imper- 
fectly belongs. 

It followed by irresistible deduction, that a mind 
so radically vicious and inconsistent in its texture, 
was as devoid of elegance, as it was of depth and 
strength. Its general bias, all its predilections 
were faulty and corrupt. If not so from his egot- 
ism, which prevented him from acquiring full 
knowledge upon any subject, his gall stamped and 
discoloured them vAih these characteristics. There 
could be no delicacy of taste where there was no 
purity of feeling, and thus the sense of literary 
like that of moral beauty, was wholly perverted 
in him. True scholarship repelled his pretensions. 
Tried by chastened standards, they came under the 
sentence which his burlesque obtrusions of them 
provoked. It was made known by tlie Oxonians 
in significant jeers. Neither his Latlnity nor his 
English could pass. His syntax, nay his very 
orthoepy, was remarked to be as defective as his 
infringements of the canons of taste were per- 
petual, both in his selection of topics and manner 
of treating them. It was really hard to determine 
whether, in his furor lingua', nature or Priscian 



/ 



20 



got most blows from him. Quoters of Latm like 
himself were common in England, but not in good 
company since the ridicule cast upon them by 
Fielding and Smollet. Oratory asked if her art 
in America had sunk to mere gabble. She grave- 
ly demanded, if it consisted of speeches eked out 
by a jumble of all things, with hard names applied 
to all persons. On examination it was perceived, 
that this was a succint explanation of his speech- 
es ; and that no other, to be given in the same 
compass, suited them so well. Genius advanced 
with her enquiry — genius with piercing eye, and 
robed in splendour. She held wreaths in her palm, 
and her ornaments had the solidity as well as the 
lustre of gold. Her presence awed whilst it daz- 
zled. The questions which she propounded were 
listened to with eager and deep attention. Being 
told that he had been thirty years in public life, 
she desired to be informed, what memorials he had 
raised up of himself in the American nation ; 
what laws he had introduced ; what measures he 
had carried forward ; what schemes of public ad- 
vantage he had recommended ; what works he 
had founded, useful or munificent; what act he 
had done, what idea he had originated, that was 
to attest to after times his wisdom, his intelligence, 



21 



or his patriotism ? If nothing of himself, had he 
been fellow-worker with others in rearing up any 
of those establishments of policy or legislation, 
which, in peace as in war, had enhanced the sober 
renown, or lighted up the glory of the Republic ? 
The inquiries were fruitless. They produced 
nothing. Opportunities the most ample had been 
lost upon him. Spacious as had been the field, 
and fertilizing the elements, for him there was no 
harvest. All, all, was sterility, as if under his 
barren star there could be no offspring. Judg- 
ment, who stood by with her balance, was 
aghast! She surrendered him up in amazement. 
The film was removed, and instead of the heav- 
enly body in whose glittering beams he had been 
affecting to shoot, nothing was seen — but a jack- 
lantern. And is this the person, the exclamation 
went round, who has ranked men of abilities 
among his admirers ? Is this the person, the out- 
pourings of whose spite have been dignified with 
the name of eloquence, whose audaciousness has 
been exalted into genius, whose very impudence 
has been confounded with brilliancy ? Is this 
the individual whose literary and personal buf- 
fooneries have been hailed with plaudits ? Im- 
possible ! there is too much good sense, too much 



22 



good taste, too much good feeling in the United 
States. The whole must have been irony, pure 
irony. Supposing him to be rescued from this con- 
clusion, it was with one accord declared, that the 
only way of accounting for any talents in him 
was by referring them to his depravity, which 
was ever driving him upon strains of thought and 
utterance, the first risings of which, though joyful 
to his bosom, other men would stifle. There are 
among mankind those who, wanting strength and 
swiftness to run ahead of their fellow men in the 
noble race of achievement and distinction, seek 
notoriety by running side-ways, in strides of moral 
and mental obliquity. To this class emphatically 
belonged, it was also declared, the individual in 
question. If, in sober belief, such a compound of 
Harlequinism and depravity did command any 
homage for talonts in the new world, the only 
remaining solution of the anomalous fact was to 
be found in his having, like any other bad actor 
for thirty years upon the stage, utterly spoiled 
the public taste. 

His claims to all genuine superiority had evi- 
dently fallen in quick succession to the ground. 
On the most deliberate estimate which right reason 
and critical justice could form of his qualities un- 



25 



(ler a strict but fair review of ihem all, the deci- 
sion passed against him as gentleman, scholar, 
orator, statesman, and man of genius. It became 
hopeless, on the book of his life being opened and 
scanned, to deck him in the honors of any one of 
those characters, any more than to make him out 
an amiable or good man. Amiable or good ! 
how immense his distance from these attributes ! ! 
In all probability, he would himself have scorned 
them, as disparaging to those opposite qualities 
of the heart of which alone he was ambitious. 
His title to the other characters recapitulated, was 
instantaneously overthrown as spurious. There 
was no local partiality, no recollection of his ad- 
ventitious fame, none — of the empty exaggera- 
tions and thoughtless praises by which it had been 
puffed out ; there was no ingenuity of fancy or 
force of logic could save him. It might be a 
shock to prejudices springing from such sources as 
these, and which time had made almost inveterate, 
suddenly and totally to give him up ; but there 
was no resisting the convictions which made it 
inevitable. Still the contest was not over. Al- 
though it was clear that there was no power of 
argument, power of knowledge, or power of wis- 
dom in him, candor required the admission, that 



24 



there was a character in which he had long flour- 
ished in his own country, and flourished in supre- 
macy : THE CHARACTER OF A CALUMNIATOR. 

This was the exclusive test to which his claims at 
last came. Nothing else was left upon which to 
build the least hope of reputation for his mental 
faculties. But in calumny, he was great. Here, 
thought I, he will bear the bell. I shall have the 
victory now. True, there will be something igno- 
ble in it ; but, nevertheless, it will be victory. 
There is nothing can match him in this line surely. 
John Randolph against the world. Here I will 
take post as on a rock. Tom Spring is not more 
the champion of England, or Grimaldi the hero 
of pantomine, than our Randolph is foremost in 
cutting and mauling a character to pieces He 
can do it in an aboriginal style with which you, 
in Europe, trammeled by your formalities and 
your fastidiousness, are unacquainted. All re- 
serves he scorns, all circumlocutions. Semper 
paratus, as he would say. He can drag into his 
speeches, a President or Secretary, aye all four of 
the Secretaries, and scalp them all, no matter 
what the debate, when your Sheridans, your Can- 
nings, your Broughams, would be looking at each 
other in mute wonder, never dreaming by what 



26 



hocus pocus he had contrived it. Nor is the ab- 
ruptness of his onset greater than the fury with 
which he can j!i;ash and mangle, when once at 
work. How pungent and lacerating his satire, 
his invective how formidable ! how consuming ! 
Who is there can stand before it ? And then that 
long finger — ah, how worse than any dagger as 
he points it at his foes, and, raging patriot, at 
the foes of his country. How it killed Beau 
Dawson, how it frightens others ! Talk of the 
supplosio pedis if you will ; or the percussio 
frontis ; neither of them ever came up to this in- 
dicatio digiti, this javelin of rhetoric — for what 
other name can future Longinuses and Quintiliians 
give it — which he darts out with an oratorical 
effect so chivalrous and deadly. 

Whilst I was indulging in this vein of antici- 
pated triumph, the Briton put a single question. 
He professed himself ignorant of any aboriginal 
style of oratory, but simply asked, whether, after 
all, we, in our country, supposed Mr. Randolph 
superior, in the line of abuse, to their Cobbett ! 
I was wholly unprepared for this question. It 
proved overwhelming. I shrunk from it without 
the power of rallying. It was plain, on a mo- 





26 



ment's reflection, that the resemblance would hold 
with extraordinary fidelity up to a certain point, 
but fall short afterwards. I saw, in despair, that, 
even in this line too, I was to be vanquished. 
Miserum mcmoratu ! Alike they were in their 
appetite of slander, universal and unappeasable ; 
alike in having each dedicated a life to the pursuit ; 
alike in having mutually ran-a-muck at all parties, 
all opinions, all men ; alike in their efforts to pull 
down every thing, and in being able to set up 
nothing; alike — in vulgarity. But here the re- 
semblance ended. In pursuing the subject I was 
constrained to admit, thali. Cobbet had the advan- 
tage. He dealt out blows of masculine force and 
vigor, reasoning whilst he denounced Randolph, 
impotent of reason, poured out sheer venom ; and, 
vile in his impotence, poured it out upon females 
as well as men. The one laid on his calumny 
with the downright passions of a man. The other 
foamed out his, with the rage of a Jezabel. I am 
bound to add, that I never heard of Cobbet's 
slandering women. It is understood, on the con- 
trary, that he is kind to the sex, and that the do- 
mestic feelings are sound in him. 
It is time for me to think of coming to a pause. 



21 



1 have more, much more, to say of this tran- 
scendent imposter, as inclination may prompt and 
leisure allow ; but not now. Of leisure it is pro- 
per to premise, that there is but little to me. 
This my attempt to present some analysis of his 
intellectual and moral enormities to the American 
people, would not else have been so long delayed. 
This side of the commission of flao;itious crimes 
that incur the public vengeance of tRe law, it is 
probable that a worse individual than John Ran- 
dolph is hardly to be found ; one who, in his life 
of more than fifty years, has done* less good of 
any kind, public or private, and who has devoted 
himself more unremittingly to giving pain to oth- 
ers ; who has committed more offences against 
those good feelings and good manners that are the 
cement of the social and moral world ; whose ca- 
reer has been more broadly marked by affectation, 
mummery and malevolence. In going on with my 
task of further laying bare the vices of his head 
and heart, by appropriate anecdotes, I will violate 
no confidence. Not that I have ever had any from 
him, a traitor by instinct to his friendships, and 
whose person I hold in unmixed abhorrence, but 
that I will have nothing to say of him in connec- 



28 



tion with private names or private mansions. Be 
such violations vv^ith him, as ruthless monster, he 
violates the mansions of the dead. I will track 
him, as I have been doing, in the clubs, coffee 
houses, and highways of England ; or elsewhere 
at my pleasure. Let me add, that to assail others, 
in print or otherwise, is no part of my vocation. 
I desire to seek in a different train of pursuits, 
my pastime^ and my duties. Yet, when holding 
up to merited odium as well as derision this most 
malignant of aggressors — and I have aimed at do- 
ing both by reflecting his true image to the na- 
tion — I shroud not myself in secrecy. From the 
public my name will be kept : not so from the ag- 
gressor, should he want it. It seems that his pe- 
culiar ravenousness cannot be gorged by victims 
in the legislative hall alone. At the last session of 
Congress, he determined to enlarge the sphere of 
his immolations. Prolific in the nice conceits of 
a calumniator, if prolific in nothing else, he hit 
upon an ingenious expedient. He turned author. 
He subsidized the pen as the ally of his tongue. 
Nothing too high for the flight of his ambition ; 
so he determines to go down to posterity both as 
writer and speaker ! ! Was the orator of Tus- 



29 



culum his inspiring model ? In a new ecstacy of 
malice, he betakes himself therefore to the com- 
position of libels in the retirement of his closet, 
ushering them into the world under the cunning 
form of NOTES to his speeches.* And so it is, 
that he embalms the after thoughts of his spleen ! 
So it is, that he serves up a dainty second course 
to his feast. The glutton cannot get enough in 
Congress, though forever munching. He munched 
in the Senate, until Virginia, shocked at his inde- 
cencies, drove him by a legislative vote from that 
body; hurled him, in her just and chastising anger, 
from a station that he polluted. It was a vote 
that will be identical in all time with his infamy, 
since it was instigated by the sense of his inde- 
cencies alone ; for he had made a show of de- 
fending in the Senate a cause that Virginia ap- 
proved. What a degradation ! What a lesson to 
those who prostitute, to passions so horrible, the 
functions of a legislator ! How impressive, to a 
mind of any feeling, how awful ! But how did 
he take it ? History has, perhaps, no parallel in- 

* In these memorable NOTES, with an improved edition of which he 
has threatened to witch the world, he diverts himself wiih the personal ap- 
pearance of his victims. This is good. It has given fair hold of his own. 



30 



stance of shamelessness. Instead of falling down 
in contrition before the offended dignity of his 
native State, or fljing to some hiding place for 
the remnant of his inglorious life, the Hideous 
Brazenface, incorrigible in his foul appetites, and 
with this brand of expulsion from the Senate fresh 
upon his forehead, reappeared in the House of 
Representatives — and resumed his munching. And 
there he sits, exulting in his abomination. There, 
contumacious in iniquity, he sits virtually baffling 
the solemn vote of a commonwealth ! There hr> 
is, reinstated upon his throne of slander, giving 
loose, as with renovated audacity, to the habits 
of his remorseless nature ! There, day after day, 
his ghastly form looking like a frightful skeleton, 
is he to be seen drawing fresh prey into his maw ! 
But there alone to munch and to devour, will no 
longer serve him ; no, his grand meal in the House 
over, like an amateur gormandizer, he must have 
his piquant relishes, his bloody titbits afterwards. 
To these he treats himself — in his notes — his 
CLASSIC NOTES. This is the desert with which 
he garnishes out the shambles of his human 
slaughter house. Defamation is his darling pas- 
sion, his eternal lust; in public, in solitude, in 



31 



youth, in age, before the assemblies of the nation 
and in the seclusions of his study, at home, 
abroad — in both hemispheres — upon the great 
deep itself — it is his mighty, his absorbing, his 
undecaying lust. Like hungry Death upon a pale 
horse, there is no satiating him. He rides. Jehu- 
like, with yawning jaws, crying — more ! more ! 

JULIUS. 



My, 1828. 



RB 9.3.^ 



I c 







.0^ 



■^ A' 







;.b=^. " 






v^ .-.tlZ 



^^, " ,-^5^^ %^ Af ^ 



/■■■ 



^ 



^. 



,v" .'J4:%''"^'<^ 




^^ v' 









K 






.^' 



^m//. 



o 






V 



\' 



V .^ 



w<f 



,* ^J" "% ^y^v^.^ -?; 






^y-^^ 



' -■^'%. . 



• >**' 
















.\^ ... ^ " ^?^ ^ • < ^ * .V^ O. * o « - 











'^ 







3^ ^O 



^ 





ST. AUGUSTINE ^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



liiiiiiiiiiir 

011 769 375 2 



